Multiple parents have voiced concerns about safety issues when crossing the street near a Canyon Country elementary school after a young girl was hit by a car and went underneath it on Monday afternoon during school pick-up.
The area in question is set up with three lanes – one carpool lane, one northbound lane, and one southbound lane. The two main streets are Lost Canyon Road and Sand Canyon Road, with Sulphur Springs Community School and a dirt parking lot on opposite sides of the street on Lost Canyon Road.
The crosswalk that was built by a local developer is near the bus loop of the driveway going into the school. It is not currently managed by a crossing guard during school drop-off and pick-up times, which some parents suggest is part of the problem.
Witness Vanessa Martinez heard a loud bang, saying it sounded like “two cars hitting each other in the front.” Next thing she knew, she saw the young girl on the ground screaming and crying.
“I saw her father yelling at the dude that hit her with the truck. And then, after that, like, the ambulance came, the paramedics came. The sheriffs were there,” Martinez recalled.
Martinez said the girl and her father were not in the crosswalk and were crossing the street toward the dirt parking lot. She added that the truck that hit the girl did not appear to be moving at a high rate of speed and seemed to be turning out of the dirt lot going toward Sand Canyon Road.
Though there is no crossing guard assigned to the school, during school pickup on Thursday afternoon a woman affiliated with the school was holding a stop-and-go sign near the valet line, directing traffic.
While this was not the first traffic-related injury in the area, when the girl was struck Monday — and transported by ambulance to the hospital for treatment — some parents began to ask whether this incident will finally be the catalyst for safety improvement measures.
City and school district officials say talks have been under way for some time about how to improve safety there.
Sandra Serrano, who has children in fourth and second grade at the school, is one of several parents who contacted The Signal after Monday’s collision. She said she was frustrated and immediately called the city of Santa Clarita and the Sulphur Springs Union School District about the incident.
“Yesterday (Monday) when this incident happened, I called immediately to the office and said, ‘I’m done. Who do we talk to?’ because at this point, we’re going to start going to one of these (children’s) funerals. Because this isn’t OK and nobody’s paying attention. And the girl at the (school’s) office said, ‘Call the district,’” Serrano recalled.
The painted and raised crosswalk was created on April 9 by the developer that owns the dirt parking lot across the street, according to Carrie Lujan, spokeswoman for the city of Santa Clarita. The development is Vista Canyon, and the developer is JSB Development.
“So, the school’s not doing anything about it,” Serrano said. “Everybody’s blaming everybody else. ‘Oh, it’s not our property, it’s not our land.’ OK. So then until somebody gets murdered, and little children see it, then you get a huge lawsuit slapped on you, then you’re going to wake up. I don’t understand what it’s going to take.”
Catherine Kawaguchi, superintendent of the Sulphur Springs Union School District, said the city, the school district, and the Vista Canyon developer have been in talks for a while about what to do.
“In this process, we are continuing to work with the city and the developer to get the support of getting that parking lot in, but as of right now … it’s a dirt lot, and it still has not been put in,” Kawaguchi said during a phone interview Tuesday.
Kawaguchi added that the only thing the district can do is support the families and students – urging them to always watch for cars and traffic.
Selma Francia, another parent whose son Ethan attends the school and is in fourth grade, witnessed a woman getting hit by a car in February 2025 in the same area. Francia recalled the memory of her son, who pulled away from his mother’s hand and ran back to the dirt side of the street because of what he had witnessed.
“The entire incident caused so much fear and anguish within me that my hands were violently shaking when I called 911 requesting assistance for the victim. She appeared to have a broken foot,” Francia said.
Francia said that she many other parents must jaywalk from the dirt lot to the front gates because the crosswalks on both major streets are too far away for parents to get their children to school on time, further amplifying that something needs to change at the school.
“But that’s the same, that’s as if you wouldn’t have any markings at all, because there’s no one monitoring that crosswalk. So, people have to do the same thing, and most people, parents will park in the dirt lot, and they will jaywalk, which I know it’s, it shouldn’t, none of us should be doing that,” Francia said. “And unfortunately, we’re all just in a hurry, and we’re all trying to get our kids to school. And that’s the closest way to get them to school.”
Jim Backer, owner of Vista Canyon developer JSB Development, said that, at the school’s request, the builder created the crosswalk.
“I think I would say that that takes a lot of work and coordination, and we were hoping that would improve things, but I can tell you we’ve been working on this for 20 years, and we all have people out here that drive too fast,” Backer said.
Backer said one of his main concerns is that people want to blame anyone, and all they are trying to do is improve the situations there, but financially it is a very difficult time to do so.
“And I, I don’t think they, they all acknowledge that, but we can only do so much. I mean, we’re not printing the money over here,” Backer said during a phone interview on Wednesday. “And so I’m, I’m sorry to hear (about) that accident, but I know that, you know, part of the reason some things take so long is that you got to go through plans and verify, and we did this as a week-accelerated crosswalk because we had to do a temporary lane.”
Lujan said that there are several proposals involving street improvements being considered by the city. The crosswalk for Sulphur Springs was part of that development.
“So, Community Services does handle the request for a crossing guard study – but it is initiated by the school district. So, parents should make the request to the district, who in turn will make it to the city,” Lujan said in a follow-up email on Thursday afternoon.
Serrano said a crossing guard is one measure that might help the situation.
“A lot of my aunts and uncles were professors, were teachers at the elementary school, middle schools, and we always had crosswalk ladies … so there are hats, there are vests that are bright. There is a stop sign that you hold, and you have a chair sitting right there until everybody goes, and everybody comes,” Serrano added.
Matt Zwolensky, another parent at the school, said getting kids to school in the morning is extremely difficult because people are limited on how to safely park or drop off their children.
“And you got to get your kids to school between 8:20 a.m. and 8:40 p.m., right? So, there’s the time factor, and how the valet line, you can’t pull up in front of the school, by the way. Right? That’s the other problem. You can’t, they can’t do it for buses and other people,” Zwolensky said. “You can’t pull up in front of the school. You can’t let your kids out on the school side. Either go in the valet line, or you go to the parking lot, or you park it on the side. Those are the options.”
